Prague 7.5/12: Glad To Be Overwhelmed And Disturbed?

-05.06.2025-

Covering arting, happiness, incomplete empathy, space-time manipulation, human-nature relationship, computer art, and AI. Continuing on this.

Happiness, and more than happiness.

Knock, knock, this is me sitting in our Prague dorm at 11 pm, after a 3-hour nap to recover from my castle treading, and after a wholesome and fullsome week in the city.

Five days ago, when I wrote the first journal here, I've - well, I can't say never - but at least wasn't expecting so much in so many senses. There are so many "first time __ ever since _ years ago" happened to me: It is my first time having the chance to take a close look at a foreign city during a trip ever since the beginning of high school - I was so much caged, always only peeked at a country and nation, and forced to flee throughout these years. It is my first time travelling "alone" (in terms of not with close friends or family) ever since, again, the beginning of high school. And even then, I was only travelling because of standardized exams. It is my first time getting back to the good-old habit of fiddling with paints and paper and clay and crafts, and so on, ever since the last year of my middle school time, and ever since the day I renounced modeling. Wow, how much I was tortured by the route of climbing up higher education!

Anyhow, without regretting the past, at least this very moment is the first time ever since those years that I found some heartfelt and, for me, most importantly, "original" and steady (compared to those instantaneously invoked) relaxation, tranquilness, ease, and delightment in my self-imposed intense schedule.

Speaking of regrets, I've been carrying the little clay talisman I got from our fellow classmate Daniel with me these days. In fact, while the idea of his artwork was to encourage us to set free some of our regrets, as well as that little talisman, I discovered that I really don't have any particular regrets that I would like to set free. It is not that I have nothing worth regretting - there are, in fact, again, plenty. But I just feel like and believe that the past mes have really done what they could. And thus, I may feel really sorry or pity for things I cannot control, but I do not regret what I've come along with.

As for my own project 1 here, besides the fact that I'm still in the process and the reconciliation with the pursuit of forms that I mentioned at the end of my archive for that, I found it constitutes at least a major source for the current wonderful mind state I have. Not only "I'm happy because I did this," but "I'm happy because I'm happy."

In a sense, it is the first time ever since those years, especially since the beginning of my college life, that I found myself justified in happiness, or, in fact, happiness justified in myself. It would be too maukish to start analyzing again the reason behind that. And I believe, for now, acknowledging this is enough.

Well, there is another set of reasons for this choice I'd like to touch base on a little bit. I realized this happiness - just like every other senses, usually negative ones like depression, anxiety, loneliness, etc., when it comes to the problem of sympathy and empathy - can not be shared precisely, even with our close ones. Honestly, I was indeed a bit sad when I happened upon this situation when an artist friend of mine couldn't relate to my joy here and even said, "(if someone found making art delightful) then the art is likely not so good." Yet, I was only a bit sad, and it had gone well, too - partially because I knew their situation and used way of speaking, but more importantly, I found myself simply fine with it. However, being fine with this, nevertheless, somehow ubiquitous obstacle among us does not means giving it up. On the other hand, although I have been claiming that there is no such thing called complete empathy, I guess maybe somewhere somehow through some sort of art, that sense would resonate, and that's enough. As now, my own project kindly reminds me, no matter the form and format, expressing, like arting, can live with us beyond a single instant. And as we live as arting and expressing, live not one take but live in each and every chance and coincidence, maybe we shall be relieved from that burden of the past and present.

Great! This seems to be a fantastic transition point to discuss some juxtaposition of timelines - and of course, it seems to me that this is one possible way of "live not one take." I once had this reflection and archive on my habit of answering questions and the anonymous question box. But that was more than a year ago. Frankly speaking, that activity ceased in the past year, and I haven't been reflecting on that matter anymore. Realistically, it was because old friends and social circle had been gone, and we all had our new life in college now, so the mass-and-somewhat-unfamiliar base of that mechanism was missing. Ideologically, at least subconsciously, I guess joining the collective abandonment of that childish game could be another indication of growing up.

After all this time, Orhan Pamuk's The Consolation of Objects and Richard McGuire's Here have brought it back to me again. The one and another boxes in the former that capture periods of the character were in my mind much resembling the underlying mechanism of the question box - of course, they differ in the media, level of details, and directness of the message/expression, etc. still. And for the latter, although I'm only halfway through, but after immediately getting gripped by its delicate and fascinating form and storytelling, I started to realize that what is happening there is again this play of manipulating space and time. If we consider the traditional comic as functioning on top of the driving mechanism of panes divided chronologically, the driving force here becomes one and another thread of time. Attempted at the beginning to trace each timeline that happens in the frame, but I inevitably got lost when the timelines went wild to intertwine with each other. Maybe after several passes or reading with a notebook would eventually help me trace down each timeline; I personally found this whirl of confusion might be one of the exact effects this form entails. It is not meant to be deciphered at first glance.

What I'm reminded of now is the concept of the God of Stories in Marvel's TV series Loki. Understanding all timelines at once may, at the end of the day, be a capability of godlike existence that transcends what we call time, an axis that does not eventually exist but is only used by us humans to navigate ourselves in the universe. Nevertheless, from all these examples, it seems that we are still so attracted to that game of time manipulation. Maybe it is exactly our natural inclination to chronological storytelling that creates the tension with and the desire to break into some new possibilities. How tiny we are and how stubborn we are!

In my opinion, that tiny and stubborn nature of humans on this planet is also what could create the tension between humans and nature. Brian Arthur wrote something like “we put hope on tech, but we trust nature” in his famous book The Nature of Technology. And I believe it is this divergence that made us so ambivalent when it comes to nature, especially in the Anthropocene. We trust it, we love it, we fight with it, we use it, we manipulate it, we damage it, we mend it, we ... My urge to break the display shelves in the mineral hall of the Czech National Museum was, for sure, highly related to my childhood habit of collecting minerals. Meanwhile, I would say this conflicting sense was also one of the underlying mechanisms that triggered me when facing nature's relic so raw as those minerals kept in so delicate and humane structures.

What we think matters, for sure. But on a larger scale, it may not. As a response to all the human inner conflicts and concerns, maybe nature would simply and eventually speak in the absolute, powerful, and long-lasting silence to prove us tiny and stubborn. The forest growing on the NYC cab in The Call of the Forest by Kristýna and Marek Milde is, from my perspective, the precise assumption for nature's taking back its place on top of human relics. Will it happen? My answer five or six years ago, before experiencing COVID, may be negative - it was almost impossible to imagine how it is possible for the gigantic human civilization to cease or how the slow pace of nature could run faster than our society, which only runs faster and faster. But COVID proved it wrong. The resurrection of greens and animals in the locked-down metropolises strikes me still today. A couple of months without excessive human activity were all that was needed. On the other hand, will we ever again give back only a couple of months? I have no clue.

Well, this may be a hard transition, but I'd also touch on my more familiar field of computer/computational art, as there was that book The Computer Artists Handbook out there in the lounge when we came out The Call of the Forest.

One thing I'd like to mention is that the temporariness of computer tech/the sheer speed of its evolution and duplication, often makes us forget/overlook the originality behind many of them. In a sense, people in the field are in a constant rat race: it actually demands greater ingenuity as the alleged “replicability” (although the “traditional” computer arts are not so easy to replicate, actually, in terms of the exact workflow/algorithm/etc.) makes only the innovative/examined/profound pieces can distinguish themselves from the ever-expanding crowd.

Then the same case comes to AI, where I see this rat race will further elevate itself. AI inherits some of the foundational nature of computer art but undeniably brings a host of new questions and complexities to the fore. In fact, I found myself more comfortable now to start this conversation, after knowing AI, practicing AI, and using it as collaborators during music creation last semester, and after the current journey into “analog” art here in Prague.

To begin with, “AI art” is, in my opinion, largely a misnomer. There's an enormous amount of hype and, frankly, propaganda surrounding AI itself that makes any nuanced discussion incredibly difficult. This is especially true considering that most people, at this moment, possess a very limited understanding of it, often confined to news headlines or superficial interactions with highly commercialized/nested applications. That being said, it is indeed difficult to establish a common ground for conversation, a shared page from which to begin.

Just how much of a misnomer is it? What characteristics does it share with traditional computer art, and where do the crucial differences lie? And what forms of AI are we even referring to when we use that umbrella term in the context of art? "AI" is such a vast and, in many respects, ill-defined concept that its application to art inevitably amplifies the complexity. The hype made most of us skip thinking about the intricate details and differences in these contexts, or prevent us from devoting some effort to discussing the different definitions, understanding, and possibilities. My personal take on this matter, at least so far, when encountering reasonable discussions, is always trying not to convince anyone but to offer some context and perspectives that may be overlooked.

A critical distinction, for instance, lies between what one might term "one-push GAI" (Generative AI used bluntly without a second thought) and AI integrated within a human-led creative loop. To simplify the context considerably, the former, in its most basic implementation, arguably falls outside a meaningful discussion of art as it often waives almost all human agency and iterative decision-making in the generative process itself. Even if final results can be selected, the procedural willpower, the artist's intent manifesting through the process, is largely absent.

Then, considering the latter, however. For example, the guess work VS lottery analogy I'd like to make: In many case, the traditional computer art starts with some system of basic principles and remifies into various outcomes by tweaking parameters and a constellation/pipeline of tools/processing. This often involves an element of "guesswork" or exploratory iteration. With many GAI systems, the sheer number of trials it might take to derive an ideal or artistically resonant result can feel akin to a lottery. Yet, this shares a certain logic with iterative parameter tweaking in older forms of computer art. Only the level of control and ways to control are different, which, honestly, are still in an early stage of development. Plus, GAI outputs surely undergo subsequent pipelines of human processing as materials, substrates, or intermediates, not to mention the potential to experiment with its concept itself or its general existence in a larger context as a thematic direction.

In a peculiar sense, GAI is arguably more “analog” than its procedural predecessors. Compared to the predefined rules and the often mathematically discrete nature of "traditional" algorithms, the massive, almost incomprehensible scale of the data and parameters within ongoing generative AI systems—whether they focus on text, image, or sound - means their operational characteristics are, in practice, closer to the continuous, emergent, and less predictable behavior of the analog world. The derivation of their outputs is, in fact, perhaps closer to the complex, bottom-up emergence we see in "nature's algorithm."

But what we perceive is that, for many, the more analog it is, the less it is trusted. It brings forth a question: do we actually prefer the analog, or is it the fact that "we know it's analog" that we value?  Consider, for instance, mixing plugins in audio and music post-production. Many best-selling plugins are emulations of analog devices from the last century, from the "golden age" of the business. On one hand of the question is whether analog gears are better; if they are, it makes sense to create some emulations as more economically friendly options; if they are not, then why do people still prefer analog look/like plugins in the digital world? On the other hand of the question is that given that emulation nowadays is being advanced again and again and is close enough to the hardware, why do people still prefer analog? Of course, there are numerous intuitive answers related to tactile experience, workflow, or even perceived sonic depth. But what I'd like to emphasize here is that callback to the idea: we tend to trust "nature" (and in this analogy, the analog gear with its physical components and tangible idiosyncrasies is more "natural") sometimes over, or in a different way than, the abstract hope in technology.

Another possible explanation for the unease some feel towards these increasingly sophisticated AI systems could be a form of the Uncanny Valley - not necessarily a visual one, but an existential one. Perhaps it is precisely this "more analog," more emergent and seemingly intuitive nature of advanced AI that makes it feel more unsettling as a human creation. It has the potential to blur the moral and existential boundaries we've established between ourselves and our creations, touching upon what it means to create, to have agency, or even to possess a semblance of understanding.

To end this journal entry, perhaps even more disruptively than it began with happiness, I would pose that the current discourse surrounding AI is saturated with both arrogance and fear, often from the same quarters. The optimist/evangelist is arrogant in terms of tech's and humans' potential to play god, to solve everything by reproducing our existence and beyond (Artificial General Intelligence vs. Artificial Super Intelligence), and essentially oversimplifying and degrading our existences. Their fear, then, is of losing that perceived potential for a perfect technological future, or of missing the opportunity to transcend humanity with these creations, even if such possibilities remain highly speculative and far from guaranteed.

As for the pessimists/doomsayers, their arrogance often lies in an unwavering faith in human supremacy and ultimacy, a refusal to entertain even the slightest possibility that we are nothing special compared to any of the life or non-life forms, including silicon-based ones in the future. Consequently, their fear is of losing human agency, our perceived supremacy, and, at its core, the sense of control over our individual lives and humanity's collective future.

And me? I am, of course, also susceptible to both arrogance and fear. Arrogant, perhaps, in believing that I, or we, can find a reasonable, compassionate, and decent path through this complex and bewildering mess. And fearful, undoubtedly, of getting overwhelmed, becoming dull or insensitive, or being inadvertently smashed by the inexorable wheel of history.

Is this disruptive enough of an ending? For my own internal landscape, at least, I find it so.